office and everything.”
“Huh. Then…you weren’t kidding when you said there’s no escape from your family even after death? I mean, you think you really know this for a fact?”
“I just calls ’em like I sees ’em,” Mimi said. She could almost hear Joe mentally floundering for the right tone, some rejoinder that would be neutral. She’d been here before.
“Interesting,” he finally said. “How does that work? Do you charge by the minute?”
As a neutral gambit, it wasn’t half bad. He didn’t even sound flustered. “Mostly, but we have All You Can Talk weekly and monthly payment plans available, too. Look,” she said, happy to leave the subject of her work behind. “We’re here.”
They’d come out of the woods and stopped cold. They’d had to. The other option was to walk into a wall of logs.
“Behold the Next Generation!” Mimi declared, pointing. Standing three-plus stories high, its massive “logs” gleaming gold with some sort of sealant, topped by a small forest worth of cedar shake roofing channeled with copper flashing, was what looked like a resort but was in fact what someone apparently considered a “weekend place.”
Down a ways from where they stood, Mimi’s cousin Gerry and a group of his pals stalked along the edge of a tiny strip of manicured lawn. They reminded her of something…. She had it. They looked like the primates confronting the obelisk in the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
They grumbled and gestured as they walked, in particular her big, blond, Thor-lookalike cousin Gerald, who kept flinging his arms out in an apelike show of aggression. For the sake of the family’s dignity, she hoped he didn’t start throwing tufts of grass at the place.
Only Half-Uncle Bill, aka Mr. Debbie, stood motionless, his naturally benign face corrugated in lines of concentration as he chewed on a piece of grass. Poor Half-Uncle Bill; the years of marriage to Debbie were taking their toll. For one, he was wearing a salmon-colored polo shirt, salmon-colored polo shirts being this summer’s uniform for upper-middle-class, fiftysomething men. For two, a neat little bouclé rug of dark hair covered his balding head.
Mimi followed his unblinking gaze. He was probably admiring the monstrosity. All indicators suggested he’d been brainwashed by Debbie into that perpetual state of misery known as “wanting more.”
“Isn’t it the most obscene thing you have ever seen?” Mimi asked Joe, feeling perversely proud.
Joe didn’t answer. He was watching her narrowly, like he half expected her to start chanting a spell. Oh, yeah. She’d told him about Uff-Dead. She ignored his speculative look and tried again to get his mind off her job. “I talked to the builder when it was going up this spring. Do you know what it is?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “It’s a replica of an Adirondack’s camp built in the 1880s. Of course, it has a few modern embellishments. Those would be the home theater, a three-thousand-dollar built-in cappuccino machine, and a four-car garage,” she said. “Want to hear the best part?”
“Do I?”
“You do. It’s not even real. I mean logs. They’re made out of recycled newspapers and cocoa-bean hulls. Very environmentally correct.” She glanced at him to see whether he appreciated the irony of this. “Yup, you’re looking at over ten thousand square feet of environmental correctness. I wonder what his heating bill is.”
“Ah, hell. I’ll bet the guy heats the whole damn place with wood. Look out, Superior National Forest! The environmentalists are coming!” While she’d been talking, Cousin Gerald and little grizzled Hank Sboda, who owned the cottage on the other side of the monolith, had detached themselves from their companions and wandered over.
“Gerry, Hank, this is a friend of mine, Joe,” she introduced the men. “Joe, my cousin Gerry, and this is Hank Sboda.”
“Friend, huh?” Gerry said, looking Joe over. Mimi
“Huh. Then…you weren’t kidding when you said there’s no escape from your family even after death? I mean, you think you really know this for a fact?”
“I just calls ’em like I sees ’em,” Mimi said. She could almost hear Joe mentally floundering for the right tone, some rejoinder that would be neutral. She’d been here before.
“Interesting,” he finally said. “How does that work? Do you charge by the minute?”
As a neutral gambit, it wasn’t half bad. He didn’t even sound flustered. “Mostly, but we have All You Can Talk weekly and monthly payment plans available, too. Look,” she said, happy to leave the subject of her work behind. “We’re here.”
They’d come out of the woods and stopped cold. They’d had to. The other option was to walk into a wall of logs.
“Behold the Next Generation!” Mimi declared, pointing. Standing three-plus stories high, its massive “logs” gleaming gold with some sort of sealant, topped by a small forest worth of cedar shake roofing channeled with copper flashing, was what looked like a resort but was in fact what someone apparently considered a “weekend place.”
Down a ways from where they stood, Mimi’s cousin Gerry and a group of his pals stalked along the edge of a tiny strip of manicured lawn. They reminded her of something…. She had it. They looked like the primates confronting the obelisk in the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
They grumbled and gestured as they walked, in particular her big, blond, Thor-lookalike cousin Gerald, who kept flinging his arms out in an apelike show of aggression. For the sake of the family’s dignity, she hoped he didn’t start throwing tufts of grass at the place.
Only Half-Uncle Bill, aka Mr. Debbie, stood motionless, his naturally benign face corrugated in lines of concentration as he chewed on a piece of grass. Poor Half-Uncle Bill; the years of marriage to Debbie were taking their toll. For one, he was wearing a salmon-colored polo shirt, salmon-colored polo shirts being this summer’s uniform for upper-middle-class, fiftysomething men. For two, a neat little bouclé rug of dark hair covered his balding head.
Mimi followed his unblinking gaze. He was probably admiring the monstrosity. All indicators suggested he’d been brainwashed by Debbie into that perpetual state of misery known as “wanting more.”
“Isn’t it the most obscene thing you have ever seen?” Mimi asked Joe, feeling perversely proud.
Joe didn’t answer. He was watching her narrowly, like he half expected her to start chanting a spell. Oh, yeah. She’d told him about Uff-Dead. She ignored his speculative look and tried again to get his mind off her job. “I talked to the builder when it was going up this spring. Do you know what it is?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “It’s a replica of an Adirondack’s camp built in the 1880s. Of course, it has a few modern embellishments. Those would be the home theater, a three-thousand-dollar built-in cappuccino machine, and a four-car garage,” she said. “Want to hear the best part?”
“Do I?”
“You do. It’s not even real. I mean logs. They’re made out of recycled newspapers and cocoa-bean hulls. Very environmentally correct.” She glanced at him to see whether he appreciated the irony of this. “Yup, you’re looking at over ten thousand square feet of environmental correctness. I wonder what his heating bill is.”
“Ah, hell. I’ll bet the guy heats the whole damn place with wood. Look out, Superior National Forest! The environmentalists are coming!” While she’d been talking, Cousin Gerald and little grizzled Hank Sboda, who owned the cottage on the other side of the monolith, had detached themselves from their companions and wandered over.
“Gerry, Hank, this is a friend of mine, Joe,” she introduced the men. “Joe, my cousin Gerry, and this is Hank Sboda.”
“Friend, huh?” Gerry said, looking Joe over. Mimi
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